I was not yet born when this book was first released. I grew up in a socially conservative Roman Catholic family in southern Alberta. I was not brought up understanding about gay life, or about self-injection of narcotics, or about haemophilia. All of this I learned about after shunning trying to understand it for a long time. I consider myself to be a post-palaeocon & I do not endorse the current obsession of glorifying the alphabet rainbow lifestyles (& definitely I am opposed to narcotics abuse!).
And... I found 'And the Band Played On' a tough book to put down. This gripping set of intertwined tales is a foundational work of literature for helping the general public to reach a more accurate understanding of the history of AIDS.

Being a writer myself, & having read many news op-eds from my own time, I greatly enjoyed reading Randy Shilts. His manner of writing is such that it gives the reader a depth of information without overloading on medical terminology or other impediments that serve no purpose except to showcase the writer's profound knowledge. As a newspaper man, Shilts knew that the most important goal was reaching the people. This is reflected in his writing that he wanted this story to reach as many people as possible.
There is almost no favouritism in 'And the Band Played On' - neither Reaganites nor Democrats, neither socons nor gay liberationists, escape his flagellum.
Exceptions to this are Don Francis, the maverick humanitarian at the CDC (played by Matthew Modine as the main protagonist in the 01993 docudrama), & Bill Kraus (played by Ian McKellen in the same), the gay rights leader turned AIDS activist whose concern for human life overruled his convictions of sexual freedom. Shilts' following of Francis & Kraus's respective journeys showed how ridiculed & abused they were by their peers for their commitment to their principles.
Of these two heroes, Francis would survive, but Kraus would not. And eight years, one month, & six days after Kraus, neither would Shilts.

For me, the main antagonist of the story was not actually HIV - it was Robert Gallo, the bad-tempered, narcissistic pharma-don with the National Cancer Institute. If that description of this character did not make it clear enough, I found Dr. Gallo to be a truly repulsive man. Gallo was not a doctor in the sense of finding solutions to heal patients who came to him for help - he was an academic, for whom self-aggrandisement & sabotaging the careers of people he perceived had disrespected him were a higher priority than identifying the AIDS virus & how to treat it.
(It is thanks to this book, a book by Michael Korda titled 'Power: How to Get It, How to Use It', & of course seeing what has happened to Jordan Peterson, that I no longer have an interest in pursuing a career in academia. Looking back at my time in post-secondary, I'm now convinced that the world of academia is a system in which the petty, the dastardly, & those who most vigourously pursue personal scores are rewarded, while those who pursue truth are not.)

The secondary antagonists of the book are the blood bank industry representatives, & the gay bathhouse owners. The two were tied together by the gay community, who shared their fluids in both of these industries. The men who engaged in numerous same-sex short-term relationships were often the same people who regularly gave of themselves in blood drives. Unfortunately, the emergence of AIDS caused the gay community to become a victim of its own generosity. Meanwhile, resting on the freedoms & needs of private enterprise, the blood bank industry & the bathhouse owners ignored or resisted all recommendations from the avant-garde AIDS researchers. It is all but certain now that AIDS would not have become the epidemic that it has if it weren't for this dearth of cooperation.

Only after Gallo, the blood banks, & the bathhouse owners do phobic socons & rabid gay liberationists come down the line as antagonists in the story.

Although he is mostly discussed only in the first half of the book, the Quebecois airline steward Gaetan Dugas, known sometimes as Patient Zero, is also something of an antagonist, albeit a tragic one. Gaetan's job took him to cities worldwide, where in his time off-duty he enjoyed promiscuous sex with, by his own admission, thousands of men. Even after being one of the first patients to be recognised as carrying a novel carcinogenic agent, he entrenched himself in denial, continuing his irresponsible lifestyle until he was bedridden in a Quebec City hospital. It is doubtless that a large minority of the HIV in Canada & the USA today has lineage going back to Dugas.

Having read this book in 02023, I found the resistance against AIDS researchers' advice astounding, having witnessed in my own time how willingly almost everybody rolled over & submitted to government restrictions of questionable legality during covid. What a difference forty years makes. If people nowadays had had the same value of civic liberties as so many did at the time this book was written, much personal freedom, privacy, & business activity could have been protected during covid. Equally, if governments & agencies back then had moved in lockstep to contain AIDS as quickly as they moved three years ago to contain covid, who knows what a fraction of the cost in lives & money could have been saved.

If it was not made obvious already, this book is for adults only, & at that readers who are unwilling to have any of their beliefs budged even slightly may need a "trigger warning". There are graphic discussions of gay sexual relations, blood donation, what it's like to die of pneumonia & meningitis, not to mention, extremely bitter political & career rivalries. But I tell you: if you read this book beginning to end with an open mind, I think you will be a stronger, more informed, & overall better person.
I certainly feel like it.

Thank-you very much for this book, Mr. Randy Shilts, & may you rest in peace.